Directory Service Markup Language is an OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) approved standard specification that defines directory operations (e.g., Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)) in XML form. The DSML v.2 specification has been widely adopted by many software and hardware vendors in the field of directory services.
In one popular approach to implementing directory service access using the DSML v.2 (e.g., the DSML Services for Windows (DSFW) of Microsoft Corporation), a DSML server is provided as an intermediate between a client and a directory service (e.g., the Active Directory of Microsoft Corporation). To use the directory service, the client sends a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) packet with a DSML request as its payload over the network connection to the DSML server. The DSML server converts the received DSML request into a LDAP request, and sends the LDAP request to the directory service. After the directory service responds to the LDAP request, the DSML server converts the LDAP response into a DSML response payload, and return it to the requesting client in a SOAP response.
Although this scheme of enabling DSML-based access to the directory service is very successful, it requires the client to have the ability to construct DSML payloads and handle SOAP packets. To develop such client applications, the client application developers need to have intimate knowledge of DSML v.2 and SOAP, which is often a difficult condition to meet. According, there is a need to simplify the task of client application development to make it easier to utilize the DSML-based directory service access scheme as described above.